A progressive look at US political, foreign policy, social, law and war-and-peace issues through the eyes of a slightly deranged ex-pat Yank writing from Canada.
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Tuesday, April 7, 2009

The World According To Newt

Newt Gingrich was positively apoplectic on Fox News Sunday, bemoaning the shift in US foreign policy to one based on fantasy. No doubt, Gingrich had this specific declaration in mind when he prattled on to Chris Wallace:

“We are not just discussing limits on a further increase of nuclear weapons. We seek, instead, to reduce their number. We seek the total elimination … of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.”

But, wait. It wasn’t Barack Obama who uttered these words in Prague when he outlined a realignment of America’s nuclear weapons policy. It was none other than Newt’s hero, Ronald Reagan, and the words were spoken during his second inaugural address on Jan. 21, 1985.

Why didn’t we hear anything then?

And where was Newt The Coot when George W. Bush was promoting the fantasy of exporting democracy all over the Middle East at gunpoint? We get daily reminders of how well that flight of imagination worked out in Iraq; in the past week alone, more than 200 people were killed in suicide bombings, according to news reports.

Apparently, he was holding his water until Pres. Obama discussed the sensibility of a nuke-free globe to deride as goofy a policy first proposed by Reagan. He’s yet to speak out against the insane fantasy of invading Iraq.

Thundering Nothingness

Gingrich and his cohorts are thundering nothingness because they are hapless without an enemy like the Soviets to rail against. In blasting Obama, the former House Speaker-turned-lobbyist did not bother to come up with any alternative policy. Of course, that is the GOP mantra these days: Just Say No.

It was the same yesterday after Defence Secretary Robert Gates announced major cuts to DoD programs that spend billions fighting a 30-year old war that never happened. Within moments of his news conference, Republicans were shooting out e-mails decrying slashes to projects such as the F-22, a fighter so over-budget and so under-needed that even the Air Force is turning its back on it, and to the Star Wars anti-missile defence that has yet to hit the broadside of a barn even when the tests are rigged.

The once-proud party of Lincoln, the Taft’s, Eisenhower and Goldwater keeps displaying its intellectual bankruptcy. The party is so bereft of ideas and leadership that it should be allowed to die in peace, letting a new right-of-center party emerge in its place.

Beyond Gingrich

Examples of how the GOP has devolved into being just the lunatic fringe are all around us.

For example, its reigning Queen, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, was on KTLK radio in Minneapolis a few days ago decrying yet another lefty conspiracy. As an aside, KTLK once claimed that Magic Johnson was faking his HIV-positive status so you know how rational it is about anything.

Bachmann warns that the Obama administration is creating “re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.”

It turns out that Bachmann is referring to the expansion of the AmeriCorps volunteer program, a measure sponsored by that old Trotskyite himself, Orrin Hatch.

We know Bachmann has less shame and even fewer smarts than Sarah Palin. But how can she continue to act like such a goofball without a loud chorus of otherwise sensible Minnesotans standing up to shout, “Oh, go away, you foolish old harpy!”

Finally, in yet another living example of Christian fundamentalist hypocrisy, 42-year old Juan Ovalle was arrested for soliciting sex on the internet with a 15-year old. Turns out that Ovalle works for a Spanish-speaking arm of the Colorado Springs Christian group Focus on the Family and narrates Biblical text for CDs. He also created the group’s Spanish broadcasting arm.

Ovalle was arrested when he drove to Lakewood Colorado to meet the young girl – actually an undercover officer posing as a teen – to have sex, according to the Jefferson County district attorney's office.

Why is it that so many right wing Republican fundamentalists get caught in sex crimes and scandals? And why aren’t the wing-nuts worrying as much about these mulyuks as they are about a happily married gay person teaching school?

Charley James

About Me

If you were born in post-war Milwaukee, you were born a Democrat. So I gravitated naturally to liberal politics, first as journalist and then an activist. I've been writing since I was eight years old and, after working far too long in newsrooms - local newspapers, major market television and radio stations, assistant editor of a major business newsweekly - I've spent much of the past decade as an independent investigtative jouralist. Media outlets have published, cited or quoted me including The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Financial Post, TruthOut, LA Progressive, UK Progressive, TVO, PBS and BBC News. When not covering and writing about politics, I scribble out random thoughts on the peculiarites of modern times.